Milan Kundera was from the generation that the Communists called “dissidents”. Father of writers and poets who rebelled against conservative “dogma” without hostility to socialist rules. In his defection, he was not as severe as his compatriot Vaclav Havel, who endured prison several times and became president of the Czech Republic. Nor was he a “militant” like the Russian Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Therefore, he remained a model for the “lightness of being” who is confused between the existential issues facing man on the path of life. The best expressions of this are some of the titles of his books, such as: the first of which is “joke” or “laughter and forgetfulness.” His books were full of permissiveness and a vulgar, superficial attitude towards women… He was facilitated by what Eastern European writers were denied at that stage, which was the freedom to familiarize himself with Western literature, and the freedom to express his influence on it, especially his first example was Miguel de Cervantes, the legendary Spanish author of “Don”. Quixote.
From a limited personal perspective, I think Kundera built much of his importance on fame rather than on literary merit. The same was the case with his compatriot Vaclav Havel, who was distinguished by a presidency that lasted 13 years, and not at all by his theatrical and literary works. The fame of the defection was much greater than the literary talent. And the West at that time was still in the sludge of its war against communism, sparing nothing in supporting its opponents, especially the rebels among its people.
Kundera became more famous than anyone else because he was Czech. Czechoslovakia (before its separation into Czechia and Slovakia) was the first and most famous site of the Soviet collapse in the “Prague Spring” of 1968. It was the year of the student revolutions in the West and the “workers” revolutions in the East. Marxist-Leninism stabbed its own people, the workers of Gdańsk in Poland, the workers in Hungary, and the party members in Romania.
We have not seen this massive human transformation in the depth of humanity in Kundera’s work. Perhaps because he moved quickly to the climate of freedom in Paris in 1975, and from there he continued the life of the “unbearable lightness of being.” And when Prague returned to its origins, bridges, and reputation as the “Paris of Eastern Europe,” he chose to remain in the first Paris, so who knows. And who can guarantee that what happened to Moscow will not happen to Prague, when some generals decided to expel Gorbachev and return the military hats and chests sprinkled with decorations to the Kremlin?
This adventure was with the Moscow generals and General Wagner. It seems that the generals struggle continues. Some of them are completely absent from hearing.
